The faith-based attacks on American embassies

Violent, superstitious 7th Century throwbacks attacked US embassies and at least one consulate last week, killing four Americans. The excuse was the production of a nasty but irrelevant anti-Muslim film nobody would otherwise have heard of.

The attackers come from the same same cult of grievance that used the publication of cartoons in Denmark as a pretext to indulge its faith-based bloodlust by murdering 100 innocent people in 2005. Back then, virtually no major American media outlet would publish the cartoons, despite the fact that they were the ostensible reason for the blodletting. This time around, law enforcement took the bigoted, talentless hack of a filmmaker responsible for The Innocence of Muslims into custody. Unless he’s helping them investigate the terrorists and their response to his film, that arrest is an inexcusable violation of this crank’s First Amendment rights, done for no reason other than to placate violent fanatics.

But violent fanatics can’t be placated. Retreating from our First Amendment principles harms us and encourages them.

Here’s a small illustration of just how far we have to go: Today a Saudi religious authority declared that though they’re still not allowed out of the house without a male relative to escort them, women in the Kingdom will henceforth be permitted to browse the internet by themselves. It’s unclear, but this may overturn a 2010 fatwafrom another authority in which it was determined that

Women are similar to other beings, yet they are weak and emotional, which drags them towards what is against God’s rule … The internet is full with tempting things that will be very hard for the weak woman to avoid … Thus an escort who is aware of her weak psyche, which is prone to sex and emotion, is to accompany her while being online.

These aren’t the offensive but generally harmless rantings of religious fundamentalists as we understand them in the West. Pat Robertson and Bryan Fischer can be dismissed as the frauds and cranks that they are with the power to influence only people vacant enough to listen to them. Their influence on society at large is negligible.

In the rest of the Arab and Muslim world, there are people fighting to marginalize their Bryan Al-Fischers and Pat El-Robertsons. If we respond violently to the attacks on us by a violent minority, we give them exactly what they want.

After the murder of American diplomats in Libya, ordinary citizens protested, many holding signs apologizing to the US for the conduct of their countrymen. Our job is to help the moderates by cooperating with their governments to hunt down and punish anyone found to be responsible for acts of violence against Americans.

If we don’t get the cooperation we are owed, then we send in the SEALS. Not before.